#310 - Can We Measure Aging Well Enough to Treat It? | Dr. Nir Barzilai & Mike Haney

<p>Aging science has gotten much better at describing who appears to be aging faster or slower. What medicine still lacks is a reliable feedback loop: a way to tell whether something we do is actually changing the biology that drives age-related disease.</p><p>Dr. Nir Barzilai argues that solving that measurement problem could turn geroscience from an interesting field of research into something doctors can actually use: measure where you are, intervene, measure again, and learn what works.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Free course: Improve your metabolic health</strong></p><p>Get our free email course on how glucose, nutrition, exercise, sleep, and measurement can help you build habits that support better energy and long-term health: <a href="https://www.levels.com/partner/multimedia?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=link&utm_content=nextlevel&partner=barzilai" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferer">⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://levels.link/wnl⁠</a></p><p><br></p><p><strong>What We Cover:</strong></p><ul><li>What centenarians reveal about living longer <em>and</em> spending less time sick</li><li>Why changing one hallmark of aging can affect several others</li><li>How <strong>TAME</strong> was designed to test metformin as an anti-aging drug and to convince the FDA to treat aging itself as an endpoint—and why it failed to get off the ground</li><li>Why metformin, SGLT2 inhibitors, GLP-1 agonists, and some osteoporosis drugs are being studied as potential gerotherapeutics, or anti-aging drugs</li><li>How <strong>FAST</strong> is searching existing clinical trials for biomarkers that change when an intervention affects aging biology</li><li>Whether aging needs continuous monitoring or can be meaningfully tracked a few times a year</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>🎙️ About the Guest:</strong></p><p>Dr. Nir Barzilai is the Ingeborg and Ira Leon Rennert Chair in Aging Research and a professor of medicine and genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he directs the Institute for Geroscience. </p><p><br></p><p><strong>📍What Dr. Nil Barzilai &amp; Mike Haney discussed:</strong></p><ul><li>05:10 - Aging is a condition, not just a label</li><li>05:59 - Why aging is what drives disease</li><li>08:19 - Should we call aging a disease?</li><li>10:20 - Why the species may have a ceiling around 115</li><li>14:34 - Why changing one hallmark of aging changes the others</li><li>23:08 - Metformin was anti-aging before it was a diabetes drug</li><li>31:55 - Centenarians live longer and spend less time sick</li><li>40:12 - How TAME tried to make aging an FDA endpoint</li><li>48:17 - Metformin, SGLT2s, GLP-1s, and osteoporosis drugs as gerotherapeutics</li><li>52:26 - FAST: finding biomarkers that actually change with treatment</li><li>56:49 - Whether aging needs continuous monitoring, or a few checks a year</li><li>1:01:16 - Where behavior still fits once we have anti-aging drugs</li></ul><p><br></p><p><strong>🔗 Helpful Links:</strong></p><ul><li><strong>Hallmarks of Aging: An Expanding Universe</strong> (<em>Cell</em>, 2023) <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36599349/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Paper</a></li><li><strong>Compression of Morbidity Is Observed Across Cohorts with Exceptional Longevity</strong> (<em>JAGS</em>, 2016) <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27377170/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Paper</a></li><li><strong>Metformin as a Tool to Target Aging</strong> (<em>Cell Metabolism</em>, 2016) <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27304507/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Paper</a></li><li><strong>Geroscience-Guided Repurposing of FDA-Approved Drugs to Target Aging</strong> (<em>Aging Cell</em>, 2022) <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9009114/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Paper</a></li><li><strong>Biomarkers of Aging for the Identification and Evaluation of Longevity Interventions</strong> (<em>Cell</em>, 2023) <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37657418/?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Paper</a></li><li><strong>FAST: Finding Agin